Tuesday, July 22, 2008

TechCrunch reports on a story about the New York Times paring with LinkedIn to target users for story headlines based on their profiles.

I like it. I've been using LinkedIn for a long time and was wondering when it would start adding a little more "added-value" to the service, so to speak. Again, the dissemination of news across multiple platforms by large news sources like the New York Times seems the way to go in the new media age. My news follows me, instead of the other way around.

There has been talk about the serendipity of reading a newspaper story that you may never have found if you weren't holding a print paper. Cycling news stories based on user generated profiles expressing their interests people can receive these "targeted" stories that interest them, eliminating the waste. In my opinion, there is really enough serendipity on the web as it is...

For example, how many times have you been lost in the links? You start on a webpage and then follow around all these linked stories and links to other sites until finally you're on somebody's homage page to Jon Erik Hexum?